Richard Milstein Wants $200,000

Akerman Senterfitt attorney Richard Milstein is seeking $200,000 for his work as guardian ad litem to Anna Nicole Smith's baby:

The Miami lawyer who was guardian ad litem for the late Anna Nicole Smith's infant daughter for three weeks earlier this year is seeking nearly $200,000 in fees from the child's dwindling trust fund.

Baby Dannielynn's father, Larry Birkhead, and the executor of Smith's estate, Howard Stern, are battling the suit.

Calling the fees ''unnecessary, unauthorized, unreasonable and excessive,'' the two filed a complaint in a Broward County court to stop attorney Richard Milstein from collecting.

Now there's nothing wrong with seeking fees for all the hard work put in, but I found this statement from Akerman to be a little tone-deaf:

Robert Zinn, president of Akerman Senterfitt and Milstein's boss said: ``We believe there is no basis whatsoever for the objections to our invoices, given the complexity of the issues, the large number of interested parties and the extremely short time.''

How about: "We were fortunate to be able to assist Dannielyne when called upon by the Court, and believe we greatly assisted her in her time of need. Our fee reflects the hard work put in by a team of attorneys over an intensely compressed period of time, and is a substantial discount from the amounts we typically bill clients for services of this kind."

It looks as if the $200,000 will completely exhaust the remaining monies in the trust:

In February, when Smith died of a drug overdose at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, the Dannielynn Hope Irrevocable Trust was established to pay for Smith's funeral. The rest was supposed to support the 1-year-old girl as her mother's $500 million inheritance is litigated.

The trust's revenues, according to legal records, came from media that paid for ''exclusive'' interviews and a seat at the funeral. According to court papers, $200,000 is left. Milstein wants $175,000 for his guardianship work and another $22,000 for being the fund's trustee. That role, Barth said, is a conflict of interest.

Now listen. Richard Milstein and Akerman do not make any real money from this type of pro bonoesqe representation. It is in the public interest (guardian ad litem representation) and a high-profile case like this has its own rewards. Why not work out an acceptable number and give this a quiet win-win ending?

Instead, you have another case that makes it seem that lawyers (wrongly) are greedy and charge the needy and unfortunate too much money.

As for soundbites, it's hard to beat this one from Howard K. Stern's attorney Krista Barth:

``That's $900 an hour! People believe the baby is rich. Couldn't be further from the truth. Mr. Milstein even charged for another lawyer at his firm to go to Anna's funeral.''

See, Robert Zinn? That's how you do a soundbite for a newspaper. She worked in that the kid is not rich (who knows if that is true), that it is a super-large fee, and even threw in an irrelevant factoid about another lawyer attending the mom's funeral (there's probably a very good reason for this, but that will never make the papers).